What are the different kinds of health practitioners?
Health practitioner over the years has proved to be a very important profession in every community setting. It is almost the most important profession that cannot be excluded in any community.
Table of Contents
Who Is a Health Practitioner?
The health practitioner is a term used to describe physicians who are qualified and are licensed to carry out medical practices and operations on patients. Nurses, physician assistants, and their likes can be referred to as health practitioners.
It is a profession that requires some level of apprenticeship, mentoring, and research. Medical health practitioners mostly attend medical schools and are licensed after the completion of their learning processes.
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Types of Health Practitioners:
Medical healthcare comes with various disciplines, some of which are listed below in this section of our article:
- Dentist
- Pharmacist
- Nurse
- Psychologist
- Medical doctor
- Veterinary doctor
Brief Explanations Of these Medical Professions:
Dentistry
Dentistry is the study, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases that are associated with dentition (development and arrangement of teeth), health practitioners who major in dentistry are called DENTISTS, this sector is otherwise referred to as dental medicine.
Pharmacy
Pharmacy is the science or practice of the preparation, handling, administering, and dispensing of medicinal drugs, those that are specialized in this field are usually called PHARMACISTS. They primarily are experts in drug therapy.
Other characteristics that are expected of a pharmacist include the following-
- A pharmacist must be skilled in the acquisition and evaluation of physical and laboratory data.
- must have a thorough understanding of the mechanism of action and side effects of drugs.
- Understanding the effects and causes of every disease.
- A pharmacist must be able to perform research.
Nursing
Nursing is associated with extensive care of individuals of all ages, it includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, caring for ill, disabled, and dying people. Those who have mastered and are specialized in this field are called NURSES.
Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context, it is in brief the science of the mind. It involves every critical responsiveness of individuals to different situations, including feelings and thoughts.
Psychology is an academic discipline with a lot of branches, it encapsulates the natural and social sciences, psychologists are well informed on the properties of the brain and how every part of the brain works, and this fact connects the discipline to neuroscience. Those that are majored in this field are called PSYCHOLOGISTS.
Medical Doctors
Medical doctors are otherwise known as physicians, physicians are people trained and licensed to practice the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases. This is the most popular profession in the medical field as they can be found in every hospital in the country and are always at the forefront, attending to most medical issues.
Veterinary Medicine
Veterinary medicine is the part of health practitioners associated with the treatment of livestock and animals at large.
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Health practitioners and their primary roles
There of course are more disciplines for health practitioners to be majored in, we are only focused on the few of them highlighted above in this post.
Roles played by health practitioners in every community setting are numerous, but the basic and primary function of healthcare providers is to ensure access to quality healthcare and to improve people’s health and wellbeing.
Occupational hazards
- Prone to injuries from blades and knives
- Exposure to various pandemic diseases
- Exposure to chemicals that may be unhealthy for the body
- Health practitioners are exposed to infectious diseases such as HIV through cuts and mishandling of infected blood samples.
Conclusion
There are different fields to specialize in for health practitioners, the post provides only a brief introduction to some of these fields as well as the importance of health care providers.
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